His mind went back to the past. He looked again into her sweet, girlish face, into her clear, earnest eyes. He remembered how they had both desired to live a religious life, how he, having been brought up in a religious home, undertook in vain to explain the Bible where it was dark and unreasonable to her. He remembered how fruitlessly she had tried to be converted, and that he had found even through her earnest seeking that he had naught but the letter of religion and was also as helpless as to the manner of salvation. And then they had given up trying. She sought, for a while, to satisfy herself by doing for others, giving her time and energy to the poor that found her out and besieged her for favors, while he had been satisfied to let religion alone and believe with the majority concerning the doctrines and dogmas.
As the years went on, and prosperity came to them, he had grown more and more indifferent, and finally, when they moved away from their early home and entered a new city, they had begun a new life, as it were.
He remembered, regretfully, that she had entered the competitive ranks of society, at his wish at first, because he thought it would add to his popularity as a merchant and increase the number and quality of his customers. Too well he remembered that the elegant parties and party costumes were first his own instigation, and now that these were likely to be taken away, he felt responsible for her happiness, and had a secret misgiving, born of his early religious training perhaps, of retribution and judgment. He hoped indeed that she would be able to rise above circumstances, but he was utterly at a loss to know how she would take it, for although he knew that deep down in her heart were still traces of the early longings, he felt vaguely there was no way to satisfy them any more now than in the past, and probably they would only increase the difficulty of finding happiness.
John Hayden was kind-hearted and upright in all his ways, strictly honest and conscientious, but apt to be a little one-sided in his judgments, simply because, as a rule, he reasoned from one standpoint, thought in one groove. He had never considered the questions from this point of view, and therefore they were seriously perplexing. Like many another he lived within his own world, and knew naught of any other. In the later years of their married life he and Marion had grown a little apart in the closest confidences, but it was caused by circumstances more than anything else, and notwithstanding the present misery he was sure of her love.
"Poor girl, I must hasten back to her," he murmured, as he rose from his uncomfortable position. "After all, I can thank God for my family, my health, my honor, for no matter how much we may suffer, no one else shall suffer through me."
There was a little pang at the thought of the privations in possible store for the family through him, but he had resolved to make the best of circumstances and be brave as possible. Once more he looked over the scene, but there were only dim black shadows in the starlight, and he went down toward the twinkling lights of the city below.
CHAPTER IV.
"Society is like a piece of frozen water; and skating well the great art of social life."—Letitia Elizabeth Landon.
"Too bad about Hayden, isn't it?" said one business man to another after the crash came.